Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/188

180 'You mean break off?'

'I mean break off—with Mr. Grove-Stewart.'

'And why shouldn't she?'

'Because they've been engaged three years.'

'And could there be a better reason?' Philip Mackern asked with heat. 'A man who's engaged to a girl three years without marrying her—what sort of a man is that, and what tie to him is she, or is any one else, bound to recognise?'

'He's an extremely nice person,' Mrs. Despard somewhat sententiously replied, 'and he's to return from India—and not to go back, you know—this autumn at latest.'

'Then that's all the more reason for my acting successfully before he comes—for my insisting on an understanding without the loss of another week.'

The young man, who was tall and straight, had squared his shoulders and, throwing back his massive, fair head, appeared to proclaim to earth and air the justice of his cause. Mrs. Despard, for an instant, answered nothing, but, as if to take account of his manner, she presently stopped short. 'I think I ought to express to you my frank belief that for you, Mr. Mackern, there can be nothing but loss. I'm sorry for you, to a certain point; but you happen to have got hold of a girl who's incapable of anything dishonourable.' And with this—as if that were settled—she resumed her walk.

Mackern, however, stood quite still—only too glad of the opportunity for emphasis given him by their pause; so that after a few steps she turned round. 'Do you know that that's exactly on what I wanted to appeal to you? Is she the woman to chuck me now?'

Mrs. Despard, all face and figure in the mild brightness, looked at him across the grass and appeared to give some extension to the question of what, in general at least, a woman might be the woman to do. 'Now?'

'Now. After all she has done.'

Mrs. Despard, however, wouldn't hear of what Margaret